Mr./Ms. Smith

Environmental equity includes minimizing pollution. And it certainly does not makes sense to leave environmental equity to the market. But high-speed trains will not come close to replacing aviation, either in this country, or in the United States, where Preident Obama's plans, albeit impressive, amount to no more than a small down payment on the actual costs of a high speed rail network.

In Canada, the constraints on high speed rail come more from geography than economics. The volume of passenger traffic needed before high speed trains repay the environmental investment in track construction (the earth moved, the bridges built, the steel smelted) may exist in the Windsor/Quebec corridor; it does not exist elsewhere. This country will continue to require aviation, which we can easily sustain at current, or just below current, levels of use. That means we will continue to need airports, and both a prudent regard for the need for medical transportation and a sense of environmental equity will dictate keeping Toronto City Centre Airport open.

Because a refusal to bow to the logic of the bottom line cuts both ways. Just as businesses should not dictate our policies, neither should an airfield important both to environmental equity and as a medical lifeline have to make a profit.

John Spragge